Kevin McKenna meets tech thinker Margaret Totten

This woman from Glasgow’s East End, who still lives near childhood home, is helping to design the future of work and ensuring that the process is driven by empathy and compassion: virtues that are normally first to burn in the white heat of technology. It’s a perception that Ms Totten is keen to dismantle.

“We’ve been very fortunate to have a close relationship with Microsoft and, as such, we’ve been in the midst of two big paradigm shifts: Covid-19, which ushered in a radically different working environment with people working remotely and moving towards a hybrid arrangement and the rise of AI and automation.

READ MORE: The English love a royal party so why don't Scots?

“Over the next five years, 500 million apps will be created, more than all that will have been produced in the previous four decades. A lot of IT departments aren't ready for that that change because it will be so explosive. It's as big as the Industrial Revolution.”

I’m glad she mentioned Artificial Intelligence before I did. Doesn’t it, by its very definition, threaten to reduce the vast majority of those workers possessing an older skill-set to the status of disposable drones, eventually to be deemed surplus to the requirements of super-intelligence systems?

She dismantles my summation rather elegantly. “If you'd asked me 10 years ago to think about AI I’d have thought of the negative connotations. My skillset is in sales and marketing. Why have a marketing manager in charge when something like ChatGBT can supply your web copy? However while these chat bots and such like may regurgitate certain word patterns, they don't replace the human spark of imagination. Chat GBT and AI are the doers, but we're still the thinkers. They do what we tell them to do. So I think it supplements rather than replaces.

“In manufacturing they've been using automation a lot longer than us. My gran worked in a major Glasgow biscuit factory right up until she retired in her 60s. She saw a lot of change occur with automation, but she didn’t lose her job. For her and her fellow workers it freed up the tiresome stuff and allowed them to focus on the important things. It allowed them to be seen.

“We saw a lot of academic disparity during Covid. If you were at school in a fairly affluent area or a private school, you didn't lose out on school time. Everything kept running through technology. But this same technology can teach skills that allow children to catch up on missed work far more rapidly.”

Margaret Totten (Image: free)

Maybe so, I say, but during the pandemic there were many children living in households or neighbourhoods for whom a laptop or a tablet might be considered an unaffordable luxury.

“For me, AI can help bridge that gap. If you've got someone who is struggling with a concept, and they don't have the same access to a tutor or a teacher, or in some cases, even the parent, they can ask it. I think AI and automation will become far more of a leveller than it will be a destroyer.”

And so, we talk about all the untapped talents that lie dormant in Scotland’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods and the way in which children from these places are judged and found wanting just because of the way they speak. And how little weight is given to achievements gained in the face of profound social and economic adversities.

“When I co-founded Akari a big part of it was embedding inclusion, and especially around empowering females in the workplace. But two other areas have also demanded our focus; one being neuro-diversity.

“At a Microsoft conference we discussed why only about 10% of adults with autism were in full-time paid employment and why only 18% of children with autism are currently in higher education. And that's a massive disconnect to me as a mother of a son with high functioning autism who's always gone to a mainstream school and who is thriving.

“How, in this so-called ‘progressive’ country can 90% of a group of people be unemployed? It doesn't make sense. The other area is this definition of socio-economic equality. The postcode I grew up in has one of the worst life expectancies in Europe, which is crazy in this affluent nation. So how do you challenge that? So we took children from these areas over to Microsoft and tried to encourage them with one of mum’s old maxims: if you can see it, you can believe it and if you can believe it, you can be it. She always wanted me to look at things and see what I can achieve rather than what I couldn’t.”

READ MORE: Live classical music is under threat as never before

So, how did this woman, one of the UK’s most influential tech innovators prevail in a world almost exclusively reserved for men? Why did she even want to choose this terrain, given the barriers she knew would be put in her way? She credits her time at St Mungo’s Academy, one of Glasgow’s most famous old comprehensive schools and the influence of two teachers.

“I was the only girl in my class doing Higher Computing higher. I was never made to feel different. I loved computing and I'm very, very geeky. I was into Star Wars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and comic books. But as someone who loves reading and who loves sci-fi, the internet opened up a whole new world and I was designing specialist fan websites for Buffy. You had to teach yourself these skills and that progressed into working as a business analyst. I became very good at Excel and 20 years ago that opened a lot of doors.

She’s dismissive of the concept of ‘progressiveness’ as weaponised by the Scottish Government and the fake actors who brandish it to signify radicalism. “Progressiveness must come with a plan, or else it’s meaningless,” she says. "We have shared values with our Chair, Stuart Fenton and Andrea Bright our CEO. They are two people with whom I chose to work because they share the same values and the same authentically progressive ideas as me.

"One of the reasons Stuart wanted to work with Akari is that he was concerned by the huge number of lay-offs in the tech world, which he felt were unnecessary. He once told me: ‘This is a sector which is making billions and consistently growing and making profits and yet there are tens of thousands of lay-offs across the board.’ He thought there was a way to do better. So he got together with us, a data company which is now opening 30, 40, 50 new roles.

“Andrea shares that vision, which is that real progressiveness is about promoting equality and compassion, but doing it with a plan that leads to real results. Without this all you’ll have are a couple of nice soundbites and some nice feelings, but no real progression because you didn’t plan for it. So we are a very progressive organisation, but in the real sense of the word.”

She’d like to see the Scottish Government engage much more with firms such as Akari, who are in the vanguard of shaping the future of work across the globe and developing best employment practice in doing so.

“They need to be pushing modern apprenticeships and different routes of entry into the market. There needs to be education across the board about how you can access roles in technology. This is a growing sector and it will continue to grow.

“It’s a very innovative sector. We’re now talking about automation and AI on a scale never before seen. This equates to new roles that need to be opened and so, we need to open up the framework to allow people access to them? One way is through modern apprenticeships. Do we need to revamp the modern apprenticeship programme?

“The Scottish Government need to open up those routes to entry and they have to be supporting graduates and apprenticeships. So, where are the programmes which allow us to take on some graduates and apprentices? Why is nobody knocking on our door and those of other successful firms in this sector, and all domiciled in Scotland.”